Our powerpoint presentation on the thriller openings

Presentation of idea 2 - presented by me

mgm moodboard

I chose to use MGM to promote my Thriller as it is a well known company for producing some of the best Thrillers. It has produced thrillers such as Bond, My gun is Quick, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and many more. I am wanting to make my Thriller opening as good as any of these thriller films. I will be looking into some of the techniques that MGM have used to make these certain thrillers as successful as they are today.

28 days later opening anaylis

28 DAYS LATER OPENING ANAYLIS

28 days later is a Zombie Thriller/Horror. It starts with activists who try to release monkeys who were infected by a deadly disease called Rage. A monkey bites one of the people as they let it out, and within moments you turn from being sympathetic to the chimps to terrify of them by this act. During the arrival of the activists the chimps are all crazy banging the cage, then the camera follows the views of what a monkey is being forced to watch. We then see the activists see the monkey in this table strapped down with monitors above it. On the monitors we see violence. As one of the activists takes pictures, the camera flashes and we see what the picture was taken looks like. During the pictures, there are sound bridges of the monkeys screeching to keep the action moving. This keeps the audience tense and stops them losing interest. At this point, the music is slow and quite eerie, but is slowly building speed and suspense. Once the cage is opened, the camera goes wild and shows a first person of the monkey charging at the woman where it ends up as a close up of the monkey biting the woman. Within moments, she pukes up blood, and acts like the monkeys were like, crazed and angry. The editing is very powerful in the way the fast transitions are done and the shots of the camera angles. You would expect the camera to be distance and away as far as possible from the danger, but in this movie, it shows you the danger as close as possible. This is what makes 28 days later a horror type, rather than thriller, the fear is created in the physical viewings rather than mentally. The lighting that the special effects create is very powerful. There are very dark red ambient lights in it to show blood, rage and anger. There may also be a dark red filter put over the top. This whole sequence leaves you wanting to watch more and more of the movie, as you are kept in your seats with the powerful music and fast transitions, never showing you the finished result.

The camera is set as if it is a person standing idol in the scene, switching from first person to third. This is creating a very dizzy effect on the audience, as they don’t quite know where they are. Are they in the scene or are they a character in the scene? This is also related with the music. Due to the high strings sound, and distorted feelings we get from hearing this music, we feel uncomfortable watching this. The way the camera switches from one view to another, while the music still, slowly drones on with slight highs keeps us watching for more!

The location is very typical of a horror in this. They managed to get pictures very early in the morning of London landmarks with nothing or no one there but destruction and wreckage. They use these locations as it scares us. Some people, usually the target audience, use this place daily, and know how busy it is, and seeing it in this state, scares them. The animal testing facility is also very strong in the way that you never know what horrors they will be doing to the animals. This is also a controversial issue at the time this movie was created, therefore it linked in well with the timescale It was created. The lighting is one of the things that make this movie and other horror movies powerful. There is lots of flashing lights showing close ups of the faces of the victims and the zombies, making it a very hectic situation, and instead of showing a slow whole shot with no transitions, it shows snap shots of the danger. The natural daylight is also very good in the way it creates an eerie atmosphere when the man is outside the hospital. There are dress codes used in these scenes that give us a clue to the genre as well. We first see the hero in a hospital, completely naked. The semiotics of being in a hospital enough shows how vulnerable this man is, yet he is completely naked, isolated, being the only one in the whole hospital. The scientists are first seen coming in drinking what we would think as coffee. We drink coffee when we are tired, and due to the lighting, it looks like night. This tells us that the scientist must work late nights, and is probably really stressed. His body language also shows this. He is very submissive, yet anxious about letting the monkeys out. During this, you would expect the camera to show lots of low angle shots at him, due to the other characters yelling and swearing at him, although the camera is always shot grouping him with the other characters. This is bringing all the characters together, showing that there is no pro or antagonist in this scene, that they will all be attacked by the chimps similarly.